


The Best We Can Do

by AnOctoberPepper



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anxiety, Bad Decisions, Best Friends, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Good Decisions, Multi, Poe Dameron Is A Mess, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Rey (Star Wars) is a Mess, Romance, happy endings of course, leadership is hard, loose plot, they're getting better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOctoberPepper/pseuds/AnOctoberPepper
Summary: Poe wished he could fix her, but Rey wished she could fix him, and Finn had told them so many times how much he wanted to fix both of them, so instead they all lived in the world of doing the best they could, and they held on tight to each other.In which the war has ended, and safe is suddenly the word on everyones lips. Except Poe doesn't feel safe. He feels overwhelmed by the leadership role thrust upon him and lost in thoughts about Rey and Finn and how far away they feel even when they're holding his hand.Admitting you love someone in the midst of being broken is hard.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 19
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I commiserate with Poe Dameron on too many levels, so I had to write this. Consider it a spiritual sequel to every "Poe Dameron falls apart after the war" story. Those fics got me through some stuffff that last few months, so I wanted to write an ending where they all get better and live.

"Get a hobby," Kalonia had said as he was leaving before quickly adding, “not fixing ships or droids. A real, valueless hobby. Something that makes you happy.”

Poe had gotten a solitary card game (lasted a day), a cook book (one week, until his chiller was full of uneaten food because food made him nauseous and Rey kept forgetting to eat and Finn was gone again, and Jess Pava hated his cooking), a sketch book (5 minutes), a sewing kit (longer than he’d expected, but he kept poking himself in the finger, and that hurt, dammit).

His latest attempt at doing a fun thing, for funs sake was a puzzle box. Kare had given it to him. He didn’t want to think about how it had been Snap's. He wasn’t thinking about that. Wasn’t thinking about it.

The puzzle box was mindless, but not necessarily fun. He needed something to look forward to at the end of long days talking policy and government structures and housing and food needs and trade policy, and then his fingers were tensing over the sliding pieces of the wooden box. _Don’t think about work._ Don’t think about the remains of the resistance, or the Rising Republic, and his place in the thick of it. General Dameron. Leader.

He would have been happy running shipments and beating back the last of the First Order on the few planets where they still had control, but that’s not where he had been tugged after the battle on Exegol. There had been a breath, maybe a day, before he was shoved into a transporter (not an x-wing) put behind a desk on Chandrila, with paperwork and ideas and diplomats shoved at him. People thought he was someone. A general. Leia’s successor.

But he wasn’t Leia.

Left right. No he had already tried that pattern. It wasn’t working. Shit. Poe pushed himself up against the wall he had flopped against after getting home. Right, halfway slip that other thing, wiggle this other piece, it got him farther but the box refused to open.

His tiny apartment had a double bed, a serviceable kitchen, and a closet that lead to a ‘fresher. It was the largest and most private room he had lived in since being home on Yavin IV as a child. He needed to call his dad again. Wanted to, but Yavin’s nights and days were almost opposite his, and he would have to try in the morning.

He really wanted to be flying, he should just go out flying, but it was past the time where he could check a ship out of their prison cells in the hanger. The Rising Republic needed the ships anyway, for important business. Just like they needed him. Separate goals.

Rose was down there though, sometimes. Taking care of ship. She’s let him sneak a ride months ago. It wouldn’t be any fun today anyway. Finn had BB-8. Offworld.

“Winning yet?”

Poe startled so hard he knocked his head against the wall. When he blinked spots out of his eyes Rey was there, leaning her staff against his counter and looking down at him curiously.

“Losing.” He held the puzzle box out. Its sides were half deconstructed. Rey took it from his hand and sat down opposite him against the short wall that separated the tiny kitchen nook from the closet hall and the fresher.

“How was- where were you?” Poe couldn’t remember. There had been murmurings about younglings and Jedis and Rey had been frowning for days.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it because it’s a secret or-“ Rey sighed and pulled her eyes up from the puzzle box before leaning her head against the wall. “-Don’t ask because you don’t want to talk about it.” That was the right one, Poe could see it now. Rey nodded.

That’s where they had both been, where they both were now. It had been almost six months since Exogol, life turning from hectic to safe.

_Safe. Safe. Safe_

And then they had both fallen apart, in tiny pieces and ways, and bits cracking off. Nightmares, and vomit, and not eating, and staring at knives, and they were too old to be fixing their broken pieces this way, but it was all they had, and they had to learn how to glue it all back together. Because they weren’t about to let it all go. So they fought and they got better. They were better. _Better_.

They were better, but they weren’t always happy. Not really. Not yet. Because Poe just wanted to fly, and Rey had never been Safe safe safe. All she knew was scavenging and surviving, and now they wanted her to be a teacher and a _leader_ , and they wanted Poe to be a diplomat and a _leader_ and a decision maker, and they were both out of their depths. And where was Finn? When things were like the waters on the ocean moon of Endor, Finn was there. Stubbornly theirs. For all the times he tried to run, he was always running for them. But they had settled now, _safe, safe, safe_ , and Finn had built himself a position in the Rising Republic. Out of his depths and a little broken but always delighted Always doing good. He was checking in with Janna, and fighting for Stormtroopers, and fighting against stormtroopers, and he came home sometimes. Tired and dirty and smiling and maybe Finn was his hobby. Poe wondered if Kalonia would put up with that as an answer, because right now the thought of him was the only thing that could force one spare molecule of happiness into his brain. That smile. Finn could be his hobby.

“When’s Finn getting back?” Poe asked Rey. She shrugged and rubbed her eyes. Her hands were still calloused and he was a little jealous.

“Two days, maybe. I think he said he’d only be gone a week.” Rey handed the puzzle box back, but Poe set it aside. He leaned against the wall, like a rag doll losing its stuffing. Tired and done with it all.

There was a long silence. That could be another hobby. Staring. But it was about as useful as the puzzle box. A pause in the screaming in his brain, but not really happy. When nothing was happening, when Rey was sitting next to him, he could almost imagine nothing was going to go horribly wrong. Anxiety, Kalonia had called it after the fifth time he had to leave a meeting to stand in a pitch dark refresher to remind himself how to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

He thought something was wrong with his lungs, his heart, his something. She had put hand in his curls. _It can get better._ _We just gotta put in some work_. He wasn’t the only one acting weird. Jess, Kare, Rey, Rose, all falling apart the second that run, hide, fight, wasn’t their modus operandum anymore. Once _safe safe safe_ settled in.

That was almost worse though, because now that they were safe, his brain had to make up reasons why his body was always on alert. Now that they were safe, his brain needed an explanation for why his skin crawled and his lungs tightened and his heart raced. It conjured Kylo Ren, and Snap’s ship, and Storm troopers, but they were _safe safe safe_. He and Rey repeated that to each other when things went wrong. When he left dinner tables with diplomas from Natoine and Da’seth to throw up. _Safe Safe Safe._ When Rey came home with strands of lost truths about grey Jedis and books in languages she couldn’t untangle. It would be so easy to give up, but they both knew she couldn’t lay down a piece of her soul because it would be easier. So they fought and at the end of the day there was companionable silence to come home to. From the way Rey closed her eyes Poe could tell she needed it too. Quiet. Calm. They would be okay. _Safe safe safe._

It was a long time before Rey said, “You’re day any better?” she peaked open and eye, and Poe shook his head. A leader from a distant moon and a plea for them to leave the First Order who guarded them alone. We’ll die without them.

“What a pair we make.” Rey tugged at the cloth around her arms, peeling off the long strips of fabric. It was a kind of armor for her, and Poe could only remember one time during the war, seeing her without them. He had caught her rubbing grime off her arms and scrubbing out her clothes by the creek behind base. She had gotten in some gnarly mud pit during training with the general. That was the only time. Now he saw her arms more often. She didn’t sleep in the cloth anymore. _Safe safe safe_. He saw them when he and Finn grinned at her early in the morning, picking her up to get breakfast together in town. A good start to a day. A perfect hobby. Breakfast with Finn and Rey.

And he saw them at times like now, when he knew she didn’t want to go home to sleep.

He heard her work fabric over fabric, leaving a heap of relatively clean cloth on the ground. That was another thing, constant access to ‘freshers and clean warm water, and sinks, and laundry. They were all cleaner now. _Safe safe safe._

Rey left a pile of cloth on the ground, and stood up to peel off her boots.

“You hungry?” Poe asked. Rey forgot to eat. His stomach hurt, but they were getting _better_. Rey peeled her boots the rest of the way off and scooped them and her arm bands up. She shook her head with a yawn and disappeared from his view for a second to deposit the pile in the small closet hallway. She padded barefoot back into the room. Bare feet because they wouldn’t have to run in the middle of the night. Safe.

Rey reached back to pull the bands from her hair. Brown thick hair fell over her shoulders. She teased it apart with her fingers, wincing when her hair moved in ways it hadn’t all day, tugged in that dull way it did when straining against normal. They were all straining against normal.

He and Rey. It was easy to lean into fighting and flying. Now they were being pushed into diplomacy and teaching. He remembered the moments they started to realize that that was going to be the new normal. That they couldn’t escape leadership. The inevitability of it, hair pushing the wrong direction. But eventually hair and lives even out, and it’s okay.

They said they would be okay.

They just had to learn to lead and teach and research and talk. They just had to get better at a new thing. And it was scary and it was hard and it was not going to be okay for a very long time, because things like these took time, but if Leia could do it all, they could at least try. They would try to fill her shoes. Between the two of them maybe they could make themselves into half the woman Leia was.

Rey fell onto Poe’s bed. She did that now and it made Poe smile. Rey could be a hobby too, at times. When they weren’t soldiers together, she made him happy. Deep in his chest.

Poe pushed himself into a standing position, feeling every bit of his age as his knees strained and his butt hurt from sitting on a hard wooden floor for an hour.

Rey put an arm over her head. Poe remember the first time Rey decided to sleep there. Not a question or discussion. She just did it. Poe had stared, a beautiful woman sprawled out on his bedspread like she owned the place but he reminded himself, like he often did with Rey and Finn, that they were from a very different culture. That culture was naive and repressive and it meant they sometimes did things he didn’t expect. They always did things he didn’t expect. From what Poe had gathered no one had ever told Rey that sleeping on a male general’s bed wasn’t normal.

“It’s softer than mine,” she had mumbled when Poe had gently asked why she wasn’t going back to her own room to sleep. She rolled over, curling like a pill bug, her hair in small tangles across his bed, and Poe had fallen a little in love with her self-assuredness, or her naivety, or her. He let her sleep, and deciding it wasn’t worth finding an alternative place, curled up at her side. She was warm, and had gotten lucky enough to fix a ship that day. She smelled like engine grease, and he didn’t care that there were black smudged on his grey sheets. She was familiar and safe, and neither of them had had any nightmares that night, or the time after that. _Safe safe safe._

“You want night clothes?” Poe asked Rey’s back. Night clothes, another thing about their new world. There was time for sleep clothes, and soft things, and clean things.

Rey made a non-committal noise. He knew she clung to her Jakku clothes like a lifeline, especially on days when everything else was out of her control. He liked the days when she pulled on one of his t-shirt, it meant she had had a good day. It meant she felt grounded enough to leave the safety of her familiar clothes. Today was not that day. Poe wished he could fix it, but Rey wished she could fix him, and Finn had told them so many times how much he wanted to fix both of them, so instead they all lived in the world of _doing the best they could_ , and they held on tight to each other.

Poe picked out a pair of soft pants and an old shirt. He remembered pajamas from home, and from his time on Hosnian Prime. Pajamas were a luxury that was easy to fall into. He stepped into the ‘fresher to change. He washed his face, stared at his beard-that-made-him-look-slighty-older-so-I-guess-I-should-keep-it; anything to feel less like a hot shot flyboy around the diplomats. He grabbed a toothbrush, and started brushing while he carried Rey’s out to her, along with toothpaste. He tapped her side until she rolled over and saw what he was holding out. She dutifully sat up. Dental health, Finn and Poe had talked her into that after a week of being on Chandrila, because when you’re safe safe safe, you thought about life and about having teeth when you’re in your sixties, because now there was a chance that they would live that long.

She took the toothbrush and toothpaste and they brushed their teeth silently together, then walked to the ‘fresher to spit and rinse and Rey walked back into the bedroom without saying anything, and Poe heard the springs bounce as she dropped onto the bed, and he put on his pajamas, and ran his hands through his hair and tried not to stare at the dark circles under his eyes, because he was getting better. This was better. He walked out of the ‘fresher.

Sleep. There was a moment before sleep but after lying down that Poe loved. It was the same silence of the pitch black ‘fresher by the meeting room, and the quiet of the silence between him and Rey when they stared at each other in the kitchen. It was a pause in the panic. Poe liked that silence. Liked the quiet and the dark.

He wasn’t such a fan of what came after, whether that be nightmares or morning light.

He crawled into bed beside Rey. He started pulling the blankets out from under her, and she wiggled, her eyes still shut, until they had the blankets free and on top of them. Rey was always a little cold, having grown up on a hot desert planet, and even though Poe kept his room warmer than most places on Chandrila, it was still colder than a Jakku night, and much colder than a hot muggy night on Yavin IV. So they slept under the covers, waking up every once in a while to find they had stolen all the blankets. They took a moment to untangle themselves and cover the other before falling back asleep. It was good. The best they could do. They were getting better.

“G’night.” Rey mumbled.

“Night.”

And then Poe flicked off the light by his bed. They were quiet, breathing in the dark. In. Out.

In. Out.

Safe safe safe.


	2. Blurry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn comes back, and the catastrophe of the week weighs heavily on Poe's shoulders.

Finn was back.

That was exactly what Poe wanted, and exactly what he didn’t need right now, because he had things to do and when Finn was around all he could think about was leaving work curl up in his arms, and maybe talk to him, but at minimum stare at him. Poe had things to do and when he knew Finn was back he couldn’t _do those things_.

There were food shortages on Mercy, and pieces of the Starkiller base were still hurtling through space toward planets, and he needed to pull notes together from a meeting so Neea could have them for a meeting on Coruscant tomorrow. The walls of his office were covered in maps and lists of names, and pictures of the monsters who had taken leadership roles in the crumbling remains of the First Order. There were enough to-do lists to last him four years.

But Finn was back. Somewhere in the hanger bay, or dropping his jacket over a chair in his apartment or chit-chatting with Rose and Rey.

Finn was back.

Poe chewed at his pen, stared down at the page where he and Kare were scribbling a list of everything they would need to save Mercy and her two moons.

Kare pressed her thumbs into her eyes.

“More troops than we have to spare,” she said, “They’d have to stay there long term, because of Hesma. We’d need food for the inhabitants of a planet and a moon, and we have to do something about their fields. The can’t grow anything right now.“

Poe tapped a finger on the list. They needed to know what all they would need so they could figure out what they could do without. He knew how to fix problems with less than nothing. The Resistance had done it since day one.

Kare leaned into her palms. It was day 173 of too many sleepless nights, of fighting things they couldn’t quite grasp, of grief. Kare couldn’t bring herself to sit in a cockpit anymore, and Poe couldn’t find the time, so now they solved problems from the ground. They talked to people and made lists.

“I’ll think on it,” Kare said. She swayed with exhaustion when she rose from her chair. She had aged years in the last few months. She gripped the back of her chair, waiting, probably for the room to settle around her. It was late. Poe should leave. Finn was back after all. Everything in him ached to be near him. Just thinking about Finn made Poe’s shoulders drop and his headache release and he was better. For just a second he was better.

“See you tomorrow?” Kare was leaving, because she could do that. She could get up and go, because in the end this wasn’t her problem, it was Poe’s. He was the General. It was on him to make the strategies for taking down every last piece of the First Order.

If they needed shipments sorted out to send to Mercy, or a meeting set with diplomats, Kare would be there, but she didn’t have to come up with the plan. She wasn’t the General.

“Yeah. Tomorrow,” Poe said.

Kare gave one long worried stare at the wall of crazy behind Poe’s head before picking her data pad off the corner of his desk and walking toward the door.

“Don’t stay here too late,” she said.

“Don’t wander into the dead zone tonight.” Poe shot back. He worked too late, and she had gotten reckless at bars on the wrong side of town. They stared at each other, daring, but they weren’t the ones to fix each other. They just picked up the pieces in the morning. “Or at least call me when you do,” he said. Kare tucked her hand into her pockets, looked down and left. She would call because that was the best she could do, and they were all getting better.

They were getting better.

Poe was better. He and Rey had slept soundly the night before. That was something. They had woken up staring bleary-eyed at one another until Poe had the courage to suggest breakfast. They ate toast and jam from Yavin IV on his kitchen floor, because if they could eat food then they could wash up, and if they could wash up they could get clothes on, and if they got clothes on they could walk to work, and on and on, one foot in front of the other, one fire then the next. But the fires just kept catching and now it was past dinner and Poe was still staring at his walls and his data pad trying to turn another impossible situation into possible.

Finn was home and Poe didn’t want to be here anymore.

He leaned back in his chair, hoping to find inspiration in his grey ceiling his and Kare’s list or the note from Leia taped to the top drawer of his desk.

Finn was back. Poe’s heart fluttered. He did not want to be in his office. He didn’t not want to be solving the problem of the week. He needed one idea then he could go home, or to Finn’s home or to somewhere where he wouldn’t have to think about Mercy for a second. Just one good idea.

A good idea. He was running low on those as of late. What would Leia suggest?

A list of everything they needed then whittle it back to what they had. Find a middle ground. Keep fighting.

It was so late.

Poe’s eyelids fluttered. One good idea. Finn was a good idea. His lips flickered up into a smile. He was staring at his desk thinking of Finn’s hands. They were rough and warm and always insistently wrapped in his.

He jerked upright. He needed to find food for Mercy. Needed a good idea.

He should just get on an x-wing and steal food. That’s what the remains of the First Order were doing, but no, that was bad. Maybe he could shoot the bits of the First Order out of the sky. One man army protecting Mercy.

No.

He was being ridiculous. He had things to do, and _he_ had to do them because he didn’t’ have time to write anything down, and half the information for his position was in his head. It would take him weeks to sort out everything so he couldn’t leave right now. He had things to do. He could leave because everything would fall apart the second he left Chandrila.

He covered his eyes and breathed. One good idea. _One good idea._

Nothing came. He was alone in a quiet office with a window out to a busy city, and walls covered in things that needed done. Three months ago he would have been overwhelmed. He’s be in the bathroom, lights out, shaking and trying to breathe, but he could do this now. He was better, but he needed to figure this out- He needed- he needed.

There were three short soft knocks at the door.

He needed to give his ego a break. That was something Dr. Kalonia had told him. During the war. The universe wasn’t just his to save. There were others there to save it with him. Let it go. Take the night off. Sleep, or better yet, spend a few seconds staring at the man you love standing in your doorway. Kalonia hadn’t said that, but he could imagine her saying that. She had to support him staring at Finn because he was going to do it anyway, and then he was going to leave the building with Finn and walk far, far away from his office and the problems he couldn’t find and answer to.

“Late dinner?” Finn quirked an eyebrow. It wasn’t really a question and Poe wasn’t going to give an answer. They both knew it was yes. He felt warmth in his chest. He felt a release he didn’t know he needed.

“C’mon.” Finn nodded to the hall, “Rey’s picking up some meals from the Corner Diner, I don’t want her to beat us back to my place.”

Poe didn’t need any more motivation. He got to his feet, shrugged on his coat and fell into Finn at the door. Finn didn’t bat an eye as Poe wrapped arms around his chest and stayed there basking in Finn’s presence. He just put his head in Poe’s hair and waited.

Poe broke away when he heard footsteps. He pushed back, brushed back his hair and glanced down the hall. Most people had left for the night, but he could see a janitor down stepping into an empty office. There were exactly three, well three-and-a-half people who Poe was willing to fall apart in front of (because he was a leader dammit); Finn, Rey, Dr. Kalonia and the ghost of Leia (when things were really bad). That was it. He did not need gossip about him being unhinged and overworked. At least not any more so than it already was.

No one needed to see him clinging life-raft style to Finn in the hall.

Poe stepped around Finn and they walked down the hall, then turned into a quiet stairwell. Poe knew his way around the office, and that still freaked him out sometimes. This building would be his office for the three years, until they moved offices to another planet in the republic (as was tradition). There would be no emergency bug-out. There would be no one compromising their position. He could fly to another world and point to his office on a map. No secrecy or hidden bases. He had an office, in a city.

“Bad day?” Finn asked once they were dropping stair to stair down, down, down.

Poe shrugged, then shook his head. He didn’t lie to Finn. They had agreed on that when he and Rey and Finn started falling apart after the war. After Poe yelled, and Finn came clean about his force sensitivity and they didn’t talk for a week.

They learned it was all easier when they were being honest. It they couldn’t fix each other then worrying about the unknown was much harder than worrying about the known. “If the force stuff scares you then tell me.” Finn had said, and they started spilling everything onto the floor. The nightmares and Kylo Ren, and storm trooper training, and missing parents, and torture. All the bad things spilling out.

We feel, it we say it, they had agreed. Rules and promises and Poe took a breath,

“Someone showed up a few days ago from Mercy and her two moons.” It was the current problem. The catastrophe of the week, and the one that Poe couldn’t get out of his head.

“Who was it? What happened?” Finn sounded genuinely concerned, because of course he did. He was Finn and he cared.

“Empresses Krate.” Finn made the same pained face Poe had upon hearing her name. The woman in blue-black robes had reached out her hand and Poe had learned that there was more than one way to be haunted. Krate may be spelled differently from Crait but every time he said her name salt and red dust painted his tongue and brought back too many nasty memories. He could almost hear crystals clinking in his ears.

“How about no salty food for dinner,” Finn mumbled, rolling his tongue around in his mouth, as if he could still feel the grains of red sand between his teeth. Poe knew he could.

“Sounds good to me.”

They pushed through a door at the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out into the boring grey of a Chandrilian evening.

“So what did she say?“ Finn held a hand back for Poe, completely unaware that he was doing so. It had been that way since day one, and though Poe wasn’t a huge hand holder, every time it was offered Poe accepted. Every time it was offered all Poe’s sensed went _I love him, I love him, Dammit I love him so much_ , before he slipped his hand into Finn’s.

Finn didn’t bat an eye, just checked both ways and walked them across the street. It was a little bit sweet, and unnecessary and Poe let himself be taken care of because it happened so rarely, and because when Finn held his hand and walked ahead Poe actually felt like being _okay_ wasn’t that far out of reach.

“Poe?” Finn looked over, and Poe shook himself out of his thoughts. They had never said anything about what they were. They weren’t anything besides Poe and Finn; two people who had rescued each other from the Finalizer, and fought in a war, and become generals together, and then fell apart in close proximity to one another and were putting themselves back together without ever saying really saying what pieces of themselves fit into the other person’s puzzle.

Finn knew what a boyfriend was, and Rey knew what a girlfriend was, but the lines were blurry with them. Rey fell asleep in his bed, and Finn cooked them dinner, and Rey dragged Poe into a shower when he drank too much after Snap’s birthday, standing just outside the tub’s rim in case he fell, and Finn never let him wallow to long, and Poe knew every button to push to make Finn fight with him and every word to say to get him to cheer back up; to feel like he was home.

But for now, they weren’t anything, because Poe had been madly in love during the war, and then he was just mad and, for Poe, the madness left no time to fall in love with anything more than the idea of a person. He only had time to fall apart. But he was better now. They were definitely better, and when his stomach started to squirm in that way that made him smile, he had to admit he was in love with more than the idea of Finn and Rey, and maybe all the blurry lines needed to be a little less blurry.

“It’s this whole thing with the nearby planet Hesma,” Poe said because even if they weren’t anything they shared the hard things, the impossible things. It made the weight of it all a little easier to carry.

For some reason it was way harder to share the good. The maybe I love you.

There was too great of a chance he would lose them both.

“- and the First Order,” Poe growled. “and kriff it’s awful and there’s no easy answer.”

Finn squeezed his hand then let go to wrap an arm up around his shoulders. Poe felt a delightful squirm in his insides and he checked himself for a second before deciding it was okay to slip his own arm around Finn’s waist. Finn leaned in. Poe leaned back. They were definitely something, but not _something_ something, and he should really do something about the smile that was warming his cheeks, and the voice in his head that said _stupid in love_. The voice he hadn’t really heard from since the war. The one that was good and bad, and jealous, but mostly good.

“How’s the First Order doing anything right now?” Finn asked, “We could just going out and destroy them? Say the world we’ll be out there tomorrow.”

“It’s complicated.” Poe sighed. “They’re actually kind of being helpful by protecting Mercy from Hesma which is the other planet in the system that has this religious sect that claims territory rights on one of Mercy’s moons and half the planet. Hemsa’s been attacking Mercy for years. The First Order was protecting Mercy, and if we take them down Mercy will be attacked by Hemsa.”

“Isn’t Hesma in the Republic?”

“Ding-ding-ding.” Poe acted like Finn had won a trivia game. “That’s part of the problem.”

“Hemsa’s got sway with the other planets in the replubic,” Finn said.

Poe nodded into Finn’s shoulder, “We can’t just go in, destroy the First Order, and drive home. Hemsa will attack, and then Mercy will never trust the Republic again. Worse yet, Hemsa and the First Order burned and salted their fields before the First Order offered Mercy protection. Nothing grows there right now. The First Order has got some back channel deals to get the them food. It’s illegal and awful, but it’s food. Food we can’t offer.”

“Why can’t we fix their fields?”

“Takes time and effort, and those resources can be better spent elsewhere.” Poe quoted someone he spoke with yesterday. “Not to mention Hemsa would throw a fit if we helped Mercy without doing anything about the land claim.”

“So we’re going to lose Mercy to the remnants of the First Order because Hesma’s being a bunch of jerks and we don’t have enough resources to feed people.”

“Quite the republic we are.” Poe grumbled, pushing a way from Finn. They should be able to fix it all. Everything should be better now that the war was over! If The First order could find the food and the soldiers to protect Mercy then they should be able to as well.

“Why did the First Order care about Mercy?” Finn asked quietly.

“There’s a mineral on the planet they use in the consoles of their Tie Fighters.” Poe said, “They stripped the planet. We can’t spare resources on Mercy, because there’s nothing there anymore. We logically can’t care about a barren planet when we still need to free planets with actual resources. It’s-“ Poe felt sick. It was horrible. Awful. Frustrating. Disgusting.

“Really, really hard,” Finn said, and he was so sincere, and so purely heartbroken that Poe felt for the first time like someone was listening. For the first time that week it felt like someone was taking the magnitude of what was about to happen to the people of Mercy seriously.

“It’s really hard,” Poe repeated. He fell back into Finn’s side, and Finn didn’t hesitate to wrap his arm around Poe and pull him in tight. Arm around his shoulder, hand moving up and down. Up and down.

“I just want to fix it,” Poe said. “I just want there to be a magic solution. A box in the middle of the base that I can blow up. Someone I can kill.”

Finn pressed a kiss into the top of Poe’s head, and though it didn’t fix anything it did make Poe feel a little better. Finn smelled like blaster fire and leather. He smelled like home.

“Something’s gonna give,” Finn whispered into his hair. “There are lots of very smart people working at this.”

“I don’t feel like they are,” Poe said. “I feel like I’m the only one who sees what’s happening down there.” Poe took in a rattling breath. “They’re just waiting for me to pull the trigger on this firing squad. Finn rubbed his hand up and down Poe’s shoulder. Sympathy and no solutions. Poe didn’t expect him to have any, all he wanted was this moment. Someone who was looking at the problem with him, and recognizing that it was ugly and it was hard. It was all really kriffing hard.

They fell into silence as they walked the last block to Finn’s apartment building. It was the one the Republic had rented for the resistance fighters after the war. An interim as they found what they needed to do next. Finn got to stay with friends while Poe was forced into a nicer, whiter, duller room in a building closer to his office. A building where diplomats and leaders lived.

Finn’s promotion was never official, so he flew under the radar of the Rising Republic, and no one said anything. It was a joke in the halls of the resistance apartments, everyone saluting their General Finn with a smirk. Fin was their general, not the general they share with the Republic, the one they had all to themselves.

It was better that way. The broken and the beaten members of the resistance needed someone to be there for them, and Finn was the perfect choice. He was strong and smart, and had always drawn everyone into his light.

There weren’t as many fighter in the building now. Most people had, thankfully, moved on. They had found homes and families and jobs far away from Chandrilla.

Rose was still around, a floor up from Finn with a greasy door and a pile of droid parts always scattered on her floor. Jess, and Kare had a room down the hall where music always blared too loud at inappropriate hours of the day.

Poe and Finn took the stairs two at a time to the front door and turned left down a short hall.

Poe loved Finn’s apartment. It was smaller than his but more packed with things. While Poe feared getting comfortable, (some deep gut reaction to war and a disinterest in settling in in his white official apartment), Finn had embraced the idea of home. He had bookshelf and a kitchen table (Poe just ate meals on the floor with BB8) bedside tables with a lamp and houseplant on each. His brick walls were covered in posters and pictures of friends. Clothes littered the floor and hung off every extra chair, of which he had many, because there were so many weird chairs in the world, and no one should ever be without a place to sit and there were often too many people in his one-room apartment. It was the only thing that made Poe jealous; jealous that maybe Finn wasn’t just his. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who got to snuggle in the crook of Finn’s neck when he had had a bad day. He knew Rey did, and that was fine, but something about imagining the other pilots holding Finn’s hand made his stomach settle funny.

Finn’s door was unlocked, and he pushed it open as best he could, shoving a door mat and an off-white towel away as he did. Rey was at the small kitchenette unpacking food from a cloth bag.

Poe grinned at her presence and barely made it into the room before a whirring beeping droid slammed into this shins.

“Beebeee!” Poe dropped to his knees grinning ear to ear and scratching circles on his little droid. “You made it home safe.”

[Poe-friend. Home safe] BB-8 warbled. Poe brushed a little dust off the droids belly and checked them over for any new scrapes.

“He was whining about missing you the entire walk to the diner and back,” Rey said.

[Poe late at work] BB-8’s beeped with a sad downward trill.

“I wasn’t that-“

[Poe late work!]

“Yeah fine little buddy. I was late. I’ll come home earlier tomorrow. Maybe we can go down to the docks, bother Rose into letting us borrow and X-wing.”

Poe didn’t miss the smile that passed between Finn and Rey. They all wanted Poe to have more time flying, but they all knew tomorrow he’d be home late, data pad in hand. It was hope that got them through another day. Hope that tomorrow would be the day. BB-8 made a sad disbelieving beep and rolled back over to Rey’s heels.

Poe rose back to his feet feeling a little heartbroken, and Finn slipped by him, patting his shoulder as he went. It was a warm and familiar touch and Poe never wanted Finn to leave again. He could have used this last night. This scene, Rey stabbing a fork into something white and gooey and Finn grinning as Rey tried to pry out of him what they hell they were even having for dinner. Poe wanted take-out dinners every night around a small wooden table with three mismatched chairs covered in Finn’s dirty clothes, and was that Poe’s missing t-shirt?

Rey dropped three containers onto the center of the table, and because Fin hadn’t done dishes in days they just grabbed utensils and picked around what they wanted. Poe made an effort to snatch up all the green vegetables because he missed the farm and green food, and Rey fought him for the bread. Finn tried everything at least once, because he had to try everything at least once, and they didn’t leave the table for a long time. It was safe, and comfortable and Finn was back, and Poe and Rey had to bask in that as long as possible. Finn was back, and BB-8 was beeping under the table, and Rey was smiling again.

They couldn’t bask forever. The sun went down, and the food got cold. One foot in front of the other. If Poe could eat dinner, he could get up and go home, and he could put on his soft pajamas and he could fall asleep for as long as his body would let him. Just one thing and then the next.

Poe wiped his mouth and stood up. Rey frowned, but didn’t stop him when he insisted he should head out. Finn kissed his cheek at the door, and Poe avoided a blurry conversation and tried not to feel like he was being peeled apart as he walked down the hall and out into the night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Give your ego a rest" is from a brilliant story by beeawolf, Sure as a bird flying high above. If you love angst and falling apart, that's the story for you. 
> 
> The “You can be haunted in more ways than one” concept is lifted from the Friends at the Table podcast. Austin (underscore) Walker is a genius at collaborative story telling. If you have any inclination toward roleplaying podcasts I highly recommend Friends at the Table.


	3. The thin line between kissing and punching in the face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Finn talk after dinner about Poe and Ben.

Poe left. Dinner was done and even though Finn was back, Poe left. Rey stared after him but the door to Finn’s apartment stayed resolutely closed.

She poked at a leftover greenish veggie a few times, but she wasn’t hungry. That was something she had barely gotten used to. Being safe, and well fed. Poe and Finn reminded her all the time to eat, but it wasn’t that she forgot, it was that there was abundance, and in abundance her reaction was to put food away for later. She had stashes of rations and stale bread all over the Falcon and her room and in Poe’s room and Finns and even Rose’s. She forgot to eat because on Jakku she didn’t eat unless she was very hungry, and she wasn’t very hungry anymore. She had enough to keep working so she kept working.

She kept going and going because she was still trying to get the Falcon repaired, and they were constantly finding relics of the Jedi and the Sith scattered across the galaxy and she always had to leave at a moments notice to collect bits of her lost past. She haggled and fought with scavengers, and historians, thrives, and “collectors” across the galaxy.She would be gone, and back again, and people wanted answers and she kept working until she was very very hungry, even though they were safe and well fed. Safe and well fed.

She ate then, ravenous and wild, and then she would start working again, fighting to answer the hard questions; Was she going to train the next generation of Jedis, or revive the temples, what had she leaned, was she a Skywalker, where was Ben?

She didn’t know,

Probably not

She hadn’t learned anything,

Yes, and

Dead.

Dead. Ben was dead, and she was still trying to figure out what that meant, and why it hurt. After war, Ben’s death tore at her in the same way nightmares tore at Poe and freedom unsettled Finn. She had held out the longest on not falling apart, because she truly believed she had no one to talk to and nowhere to go. Ben’s piece of the force that had always been with her had been destroyed, and she felt untethered in a way she couldn’t quite understand.

After the war she held everything in, fighting and fuming and reasoning with herself until she had tangled her heart into so many knots that it hurt just to sit up. To breathe. It only took a few weeks to reach a point she thought she would never come back from. She remembered sitting cross-legged staring at a pile of wires on the Falcon wanting to yell at her body to stop hurting, and her brain to stop racing, because _nothing_ was wrong, _nothing_ actually hurt, so why did everything feel so heavy? She needed to get up, to move, but she couldn’t. Then something exploded, a crash and a curse. Fist hitting metal deep in the ship. It jerked her back into reality. Rey didn’t know it until a few minutes later that Poe had busted a panel in the Falcon.

When she found him his knuckles were bleeding and there were loose wires sparking at his feet. He stared at her, panicked and ashamed. They were a mess. Both trying to repair a ship as broken as they were and both trying to do it alone.

Poe cried and Rey felt something in her release. There was nothing left to hide. She found a rag and Poe wrapped his hand. They fell onto the grated floor. Leaned into the walls. They confessed their fears, and griefs like they were purging the tar from their souls. Poe didn’t flinch when she said Ben’s name and Rey didn’t bat and eye when Poe exhaled the phase “fly a ship straight into the sun.” They didn’t sleep that night. They were broken and together.

They were shattered, but after that night there was at least another person there to help pick up the pieces. And when Rey looked closer she found that she had accidentally picked up pieces of Poe and made them her own. She had shards of him lodged in her like sunshine shrapnel. His favorite foods, and the color orange, the way he breathed when he fell asleep, and the way he didn’t when he was afraid.

The way he looked at Finn. It was hard to figure out who that piece had originally belonged to.

Maybe they picked it up together.

When they got back to the room, sob soaked and cold, Finn made food, wrapped them in blankets and kissed their foreheads.

“I was waiting for you,” were the softest words Rey had ever heard. She hadn‘t really been alone.

It was their Finn. Their person.

Their wide-eyed stubborn love. He always said he was doing fine and he was. Comparatively. The war had ended but he had had years to find his footing in uncomfortable. The ripple of culture shock after leaving the First Order had been bad, but he had gotten better which meant they could too. He told them that in fewer words. He told them in smiles they longed to mimic, and in his hugs and held hands. They watched him like a light in the dark of space. A lighthouse calling them home. 

They were getting better, but Poe had been so quiet at dinner, and then he had left. Disappeared into the night without letting their light walk him home.

“You think he’s okay?” Rey lost hope that Poe would change his mind and come back to watch a holovid or sing a stupid song on the guitar Finn had stashed under his bed.

“Work’s stressing him out,” Finn said. Rey picked her feet up to rest them under Finn’s thighs so his legs would warm her toes.

“Wasn’t super chatty tonight was he?”

“Neither were you.” Finn poked the top of her toes and Rey crinkled her face, trying to dislodge his attention with a twitch of her foot.

“I’m trying to translate ancient texts in my brain,” she lied. “It’s complicated.” She smirked so Finn would know she was lying then admitted, “I’m just not looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Grand scheme of things or something in particular?” Finn asked. It was an important question. Something in particular you could do something about, the grand scheme was just there. Hanging over her head like an ax on a string. She waved a hand around,

“I have to do this translating stuff, eventually, and I hate it, so a little of both.”

Finn nodded. “Thankfully that’s tomorrow’s problem-” He got up from the table, “for now do you want to help me do dishes?”

Rey made a face at the pile of fungus-covered food-stained dishes that had been left in his sink since the last time he had been home. “I would rather kiss a Nerf actually.”

Finn picked up three of the dishes from the table, and walked over to his small kitchenette. “I’ll let you dry?” He tried to make it sound like a treat. It wasn’t and Rey only relented because she was certain that she and Poe had made about half of the dishes dirty in the first place. Rey cleaned up the bag of fruit Finn had pulled from the chiller for dessert, and their empty glasses.

“Did you like dinner?” Finn asked as Rey set the glasses in the sink, “I especially liked the- uhhh What did Poe call them?”

“The brussel sprouts?” Rey made a face, “They were awful.”

“They were not that bad.”

“I used to live off expired Empire rations, but those were worse.”

Finn started matching containers with lids while Rey opened the chiller to stuff everything back in. Finn always had too much food. He always wanted to offer people something to eat when they came over, and he got a kick out of every new flavor the world had to offer. He couldn’t walk by a store without stopping to get some treat he saw in the window. Rey flat out refused to go grocery shopping with him anymore. Thankfully Rose, Poe or BB-8 always volunteered to be his impulse control on those days.

She set the red fruit in last while Finn turned on the faucet. Fresh, abundant running water, pumped right into their apartments. It felt a little like magic every time. She stared at his hands, wanting to say something, but finding it a little difficult. It felt too nebulous. He made a face at something crusty and brown-green and she remembered it was just Finn. She could say anything to him.

“Can I ask you very weird favor?”

Finn scrubbed at the bowl, then said, “Of course.”

Rey stepped around Finn and hoped onto the counter. “Can you maybe not get the red fruit things for shared dinner again?”

Finn handed her a rag for drying and the first clean bowl. Dishes might have been Rey’s least favorite chore but she liked having time to talk, and Finn’s counter was remarkably comfortable.

“No red berries.” Finn didn’t bat an eye at the request, just gave her a soft smile and a nod, “Can do.”

He held a cup under the dish water like he was torturing it for information, then freed it only to find a red crust still around the rim. He frowned, and dunked it again. While he waited for it to soak he asked, “Is it Ben?” He looked up and met her eye.

 _Can’t lie._ Rey reminded herself. _Won’t lie._ Poe made that very clear, and she didn’t want to fight and bottle and hurt again so Finn and Poe knew everything and they would keep getting to know everything. It helped that when she didn’t tell them they figured it out frustratingly quickly and would shoot her worried looks and mumble in quiet concerned whispers just out of her earshot. It was easier just to say it, even if she would rather storm out of a room, or glower until they stopped worrying. But Poe laid his soul bare time after time so she could too.

“It’s Ben,” she admitted. It took the same amount of time for Finn to scrub down the pink-tinted mug as it did for her to say, “We fought once, and red berried spilled everywhere. I remember their smell because they splattered on the floor and smashed under our feet.“ She wanted to say more, but didn’t know or maybe didn’t like how she was feeling about it. Finn didn’t rush her, just pulled several forks from the bottom of the sink and started scrubbing them down.

“It’s like when I’m not looking right at it, the memories of him- they’re warm and familiar. It’s fine. The berries are fine.” There was something beautiful in Ben’s smile in the last seconds of his life. There was something painfully comforting in the moments they fought together against Snoke and his guards, and against Palpatine. When she didn’t look right at it he was like the warmth from the sun on Ajan Kloss, warm and safe. Then she looked closer and the sun morphed into Jakku’s, overwhelming and scalding.

“I started thinking about why they were familiar, and I looked too closely.” She saw Kylo’s eyes and felt the heat of his blade too close to Finn and his hand too close to Poe, and his darkness too close to Ben. “I kinda just want to bring him back from the dead so I can punch him in the face.” Rey’s hand turned to a fist. She really hated Kylo Ren.

Finn wiped a hand on his pants and placed it over hers. It was too warm from the water and already a little wrinkly. It felt perfect.

She didn’t want Ben dead. But she didn’t know what she would do if he were alive. She loved him and hated him and she was so relieved that he was gone and empty without him. His absence would always be a wound in her heart, but maybe his absence was also the thing she could build a foundation on, so she could build something better. Be a little bit better.

“Kriff.” Rey cursed. She hated feeling so raw.

Finn squeezed. “I get it,” he said. 

Rey breathed in, something she hadn’t done in a few sentences. Finn grinned a little too knowingly, and Rey fell happily into the comfort that was his smile. She felt crazy, holding all the hate in love for Ben in her at the same time. She forgot Finn knew love and hate too. He hated being raised as a storm trooper yet some days he craved the plain protein bars he had lived off of for 20 years. That nasty barely-sustenance was safe and familiar. He hated following orders for the sake of following orders, but he felt most comfortable when given a mission. It was a tightrope.

“You ever wanna break something for the hack of it?” Rey asked. Some days she wanted to whip out her lightsaber and beat it against the nearest wall.

“Too often.” Finn wrapped an arm around her to peck the top of her head, then seeing that she felt better went back to his dishes.

They washed and dried in quiet until only one plate was left in the grey bubbly water.

“Do you have plans for the rest of the night?” Finn pinched the plate out of the sink, scrubbed grey sludge off the edge and dunked it again. Rey didn’t have plans. She hadn’t thought past dinner. Plans. Thinking ahead. Day after day.

“Uhhhh. I need to repair the hall lights on the Falcon.” She said, “Well I don’t need to, but I’m worried one of the loose wires is going to burn a hole in another system and then cascading failures.”

“As long as you have something to do,” Finn said. He scrubbed at a spot of white goo on the plate and added, “Better that then stewing about Darth helmet Fetish.” He handed her the clean plate and pulled the stopper on his sink.

Rey smirked. Finn and Poe cursed out Kylo’s name on a regular basis, but they were at least creative about it. She had sympathy for them. Ben meant something to her in a twisted way, but she also knew the damage he had caused both of them. Finn was more open about it. Most of his history with Kylo was vague and bureaucratic. She and Poe were the opposite, their history with Kylo was sharp and cut deep. They didn’t always know how to talk about him, but they barreled through and they tried their best.

“You’re welcome to come along,” Rey said. Finn wasn’t much for repairing ships, but he liked playing with the Dejarik board and sometimes he could find her the tool she needed if she pointed very intently at it.

“Nah. I need to get some things sorted out here.” Finn made a show of sounding too burdened with work to come along, and Rey made a face.

“Your loss. Poe and I were going to teach you how to repair a hyperdrive sometime, but you just don’t put in the effort.”

“I think I’ll live.” Finn leaned into the counter, and Rey had a strange urge to lean into him, rest her head against his shoulder, press her cheek against his. It would be so warm. She could live there, in the crook of his neck. On his broad shoulders.

“I should get going.” Rey skipped off the counter before her brain could wander and further down that particular path.

“Yeah.” Finn followed her with his eyes, looking a little like he knew what she had just been thinking. Maybe he did. Kriff, she kept forgetting he was force-sensitive. She needed to leave.

“How about we catch breakfast tomorrow?” Rey asked, backing toward the door. Her stomach gave an confusing little flip before Finn answered,

“I’ll pick up Poe.” He smiled, “and we’ll come get you.”

“Brilliant.” Rey reached back for the door handle before she backed into it. Finn was still by the counter, leaning. Staring. Big brown eyes.

Rey turned and left in a hurry, very grateful for her Jedi senses so she didn’t trip over the doorframe.

Falcon, Falcon. Just go to the Falcon. She didn’t know what had come over her, or rather she did and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

Just get to the Falcon and this stupid feeling will go away, and she can go back to her regularly scheduled programming.


	4. Can we talk about it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe can't sleep and finds Rey in the Falcon working. He tries to breach the subject of their relationship.

He was better. Definitely better. Definitely not awake at midnight. Insomnia was Finn’s thing and sometimes Rey’s. Poe was a professional sleeper. A professional at falling asleep in odd places and odder times. Cockpit? Child’s play. Mess hall, once a week at least. Meetings? More often than he’d like to admit.

He was great at sleeping, even during the worst months, so there had to be some kind of earth-shattering disaster for him to be awake. Nothing felt earth shattering. Mercy was eating at him, but that was just the problem of the week. Finn was back and dinner had been amazing, but that stuff had never kept him up before. He was good at sleeping. That was possibly one of the few reasons he had survived the last few months. He could do anxiety and nausea and his new fear of backfiring speeders, and fireworks but he would have died without being able to pass out at the drop of a hat.

He looked at his clock. 12:10. He wasn’t going to sleep.

He wasn’t going to sleep and because he was better— definitely better— he knew how to handle that. Well, he knew how to handle Finn’s sleeplessness. Tea and resting. Lying in bed giving your body a break was better than nothing. Resting was better than nothing.

Poe rolled out of bed and checked that BB-8 hadn’t startle from his position plugged into the wall socket. He didn’t need the chirpy droid worried about him even though he was very glad to have the little guy back.

Poe crept to his kitchenette and began rummaging in his cupboards. He had tea somewhere. Finn’s stash was in a grey tin with an unknown insignia on the top. It was somewhere. Every flavor was bought from a neighborhood shop one after the other by Finn who was delighted by every new scent and flavor.

Poe had pulled everything off two separate shelfs when BB-8 bumped into his shin. Poe’s heart leapt, sending electric sparks into every extremity, before he realized who was at his ankles. He hadn’t even heard the little guy roll across the floor.

“BB!” Poe stumbled, then righted himself on the counter. “No. I’m fine BB-8. Just wanted tea.”

BB-8 sounded skeptical, but rolled a few steps back so Poe could step around him for cabinet number three.

He found Finn’s tin wedged behind some bland protein bars in the back of cabinet number four. Finn’s go to comfort food. He should have remembered, in the haze of a few months ago Rey and Finn had both stolen space in the shelves in his apartment. Those were the hard days when Finn would bar the door and they would sit on the ground at the foot of Poe’s bed and not move for hours. Sometimes they watched Holovids and sometimes they just shut their eyes and waited, curled up in blankets or asleep one another’s shoulders. They survived.

Poe shuddered trying to shake that weight of those days off. They were better. So much better now. And he was too. He took the tea off the shelf, picked a bag at random and began warming up a pot of water. BB-8 chirped quietly while they waited for the water to boil.

“Did you have a nice adventure with Finn?” Poe yawned.

[Boring]

“Yeah. No bad guys?”

[No fly. No maintenance] the droid seemed more than a little upset that he hadn’t flown in an X-wing in a while.

“Yeah.” Poe said, “Maybe next time, buddy.”

BB-8 warbled, annoyed.

“Rey’s still working on the Falcon. Maybe you could help her out tomorrow while I’m in the office.”

BB-8 made a noise that Poe couldn’t pretend meant anything except, “Offices are the worst,” before spinning his head and stalking away.

“BB-“ before Poe could go after the droid his water was boiling and Poe fumbled to fill his cup while keeping an eye on them. The droid was at the door, pouting.

“I told you I’d try to fly sometime soon.” Poe walked to the door and squatted down. BB-8 rolled back and forth. “This weekend, maybe, if everything with this Mercy problem sorts itself out.”

BB-8 tittered, and bumped into the door.

“You want to do down to the Falcon and look around?”

BB-8 rolled into the door again. Poe looked around trying to find a good reason to say no that wasn’t “going to the falcon will make me nostalgic and depressed,” but he couldn’t. He sighed. He wasn’t exactly wearing the right clothes to be wandering around in public, but the garage was technically connected to his building via a speeder parking garage, so it wasn’t like they would have to go outside. BB-8 bumped the door again.

“Let me at least put on a shirt.” Poe set his mug down (it was too hot to drink right then anyway and his hand was burning from holding it) and walked to his closet.

He found a shirt and since he was there anyway, pulled an old pair of coveralls over his pajama pants and tied them off around his hips. He didn’t need to look nice, but he also didn’t need to look completely unhinged. The Rising Republic people worked insane hours, and many lived in his building. He didn’t need any more bizarre rumors floating around. It wouldn’t hurt to have coveralls, since they would make him look like he fit in in the garage. Like he used to.

He snatched up his mug and then to BB-8 said, “let’s go then.”

They walked down halls and up stairways, across the parking garage and finally stepped into the giant hanger where the resistance had rested its fleet after coming to Chandrila. The raw hanger air hit him, sending chills down his arms and up his back. He had to stand for a moment waiting for the - what was it- fear, exhilaration, comfort— that wrapped around him to dissipate. His eyes checked out every x-wing and his lungs ached from the scent of engine grease and fuel.

When he got his bearings, deciding he didn't know what he was feeling, only that it was bearable, he walked until he found the Falcon tucked close to the main exit. They let Rey keep it, even though it should be in some evidence locker or in Lando’s hands. She had fought tooth and nail and no one could argue with the last Jedi, and no one wanted to be haunted by a Solo or a Skywalker, so she and Chewie kept it.

Poe was barely halfway to the Falcon when her heard the sound of mumbling and a wrench hitting metal. Apparently he wasn’t the only one awake. BB-8 beeped happily and flew forward. Poe followed a little slower.

The Falcon’s hatch was down, and he could hear Rey quietly cursing. Finn didn’t sleep, Poe slept like a champion but Rey was somewhere in the middle. She slept when she was tired, and worked when she wasn’t and she worked even more when she had something on her mind.

“BB-8?” He heard her voice, but didn’t see her.

He walked down one hallway, then the next, averting his eyes when he came to a dented panel with ripped out wiring. Neither of them had the stomach to fix it yet. Sometimes the anger was worse than the anxiety. Maybe that was why Kalonia wanted him to get a habit that didn’t involve fixing things. It tended to end in him cursing and hitting things. He pushed down the thrumming in his heart and turned another corner. Rey was sitting cross-legged in front of a removed metal panel. Wires and tape were scattered around.

“You alright there Sunshine?” Poe greeted.

“I told you not to call me that.”

“Sun ray?” Poe forced half a smile, “I thought it was cute.”

Rey looked over her shoulder, unimpressed.

“Fine.” Poe dropped the act and sipped at his tea. After burning his tongue, then his throat on the walk over it was finally the perfect temperature. “You all right Master Skywalker?”

Rey relented to the name calling. She dropped a bundle of wires on the floor and blew out a lungful of pent-up air.

“I’m fine, flyboy.” Poe flinched, but got the point. “It’s just-“ she waved at the mess in front of her. Half the wires were burnt and the other half looked like they had been chewed on. “I’m gonna have to rewire half the ship. Every time she hits something sparks fly, and it shorts out the actually vital systems. She’s a mess. Been the hands of scrappers too long.”

Poe whistled, appreciating the extent of repairs that needed done, and already starting to plan out how to help. Then he reminded himself he had no free time. Maybe after work though, and he took some weekends off…

“You okay?” Rey glanced up at him.

Poe shook himself back to the present. Realizing he wasn’t in any immediate danger from flying wrenches, Poe took a few steps forward and dropped to the ground at Rey’s side. There was a green wire twisted up behind a plate, he twisted it in his fingers and stared at its fraying end.

“I’m gonna have to order parts,” Rey said when Poe didn’t answer. “I probably shouldn’t leave planet without doing something about this, but she’ll fly if she has to.” Talking shop was one of his favorite things about Rey. He never had to explain parts and pieces to her. He could just walk into a room rattle off five technical issues about an x-wing and Rey would instantly know what he meant, and also how much of a pain in the ass it would be to fix it. He hoped she felt the same way about him.

“Anything I can do to help?” He dropped the wire and went back to his tea.

Rey stared ahead.

“Not tonight probably,” she said. She blinked as if suddenly realizing he was there and added, “What are you doing awake? I thought you would be passed out.”

Poe picked at the sleeves of the coverall tied around his waist. The lights flickered overhead.

“BB-8 don’t mess with the fuse box right now!” Rey yelled. The lights stopped flickering and Poe heard BB-8 beep an ingenue apology before rolling farther into the ship. Rey picked up a wrench and balanced it on her finger, tossed it up and caught it. Another thing Poe loved about her; the way she was amazing without realizing it, fiddling mindlessly, and tossing things around with ease.

“I thought I would be passed out too,” Poe said.

“Tea?” Rey looked into his mug and grinned. Poe felt his own lips flickering upward.

“Yeah. Finn left some at my place. Thought it might help.”

“Did you also think wandering around a garage in the middle of the night would help?”

“BB-8 was bored, and look who’s talking.”

Rey spun the wrench around her fingers a few times then said quietly, “I don’t really like sleeping alone.” She looked surprised to find herself saying that, and didn’t look at Poe as she did. She was squinting at the wall, contemplating her own honesty. “It should be comfortable, but it’s not. I liked sharing a bunk in the resistance, and now going back to being alone in a room- It’s awful. Spooky even.”

Poe’s mouth opened then closed. Blurry lines. He had never said yes to her sleeping in his bed, it always just happened. As far as he knew she did the same with Finn. Blurry lines. Did he even want her in his bed?

Yes, of course he did. He should offer his bed. Officially. Unblurry the lines, but was that what he wanted? Things were good. They were better and he didn’t want a line to tear everything apart.

But he needed it. A line. A solid line, because some mornings he woke up and just wanted to roll closer to her warmth, bask in her existence, and he couldn’t do that. Not if she didn’t want it too.

Poe took a deep breath, wanting to say something consolatory and noncommittal, but what came out was, “my bed’s always there if you want it.” _Shit._ Damn his heart.

Rey tapped the ground with her wrench. A few metal thunks punctuated her thoughts. “I know. Finn’s said the same thing.” She looked a little distraught when she said, “I just don’t want to impose. I’m always coming in late and I don’t want to wake you or Finn.”

He was in it now, might as well commit. “Chose my bed then.” Poe shrugged. “You already have the extra key to my room, and I’m good at falling back asleep. Finn-“

“Not so much,” Rey finished the sentence for him.

“Anytime. Really.” Blurry lines, blurry lines. Blurry lines. Poe’s stomach swam. He could feel the hot tea swirling. He needed to talk, to ask. They sat in silence for a long time, until words he couldn’t keep down anymore regurgitated.

“Can I ask you something about relationships?”

Rey knew what a girlfriend was. She knew. And it was what he wanted, if he were honest with himself, right. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Family.

He was shocked when Rey shook her head, vehemently, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Poe felt like the wind had been knocked straight out of him. He came up gasping,

“Not now. I’ve already went through this today with Finn, and I’m not interested.”

“Oh. yeah?” Poe tried to remain level, and not betray his panic or surprise. It was fine. She didn’t want to talk about it today. But something was squeezing his heart so tightly he thought he might cry. Finn talked to Rey about relationships too. Were they? Without him? They’d always been closer than they were with him. And she probably wasn’t interested and- what did he expect really?

“I’m sorry,” Ready said. “I just. I came here to work and not think about it. Not about him or anyone and ” Rey took a stuttering breathe and “I’m not in the mood.”

Poe nodded mutely, feeling himself die. What had Finn said?! He felt briefly protective. Did she break Finn’s heart? Did he break hers? His own felt a little achy. But it was ridiculous to feel as though he had lost something. He hadn’t. Rey hadn’t kicked him off the ship. They could still be friends. He could be more than happy with that. He already was.

“I’ll head out so you can work.” He moved to get up but Rey smacked his leg.

“I didn’t say you had to go. I need help with this panel, I can’t get it off.” Poe felt a little dubious, but sat back down. She handed him a wrench and readjusted so she was leaning into the wall. She reached her hand into begin screwing out a small panel.

“You should tell me about Mercy while we work,” Rey suggested. “Maybe getting it out in the open will let you sleep.”

She reached for the wrench and Poe handed it over.

“Never want to talk about that again,” he mumbled.

“Fine, when are you taking BB-8 out for a ride?”

“Also probably never.” Rey took a second to frown at him and Poe sighed. “This weekend. I keep telling myself this weekend.”

“Fair enough.” Rey went back to work. “You know what you should do? Fly to Mercy and just blast the First Order out of the sky. Two problems with one stone.”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it.” Poe had dreams of doing just that. Shoot his problems. He really wanted to kill Captain what’s-his-face and become the one-man army for Mercy. Screw Hemsa, and if he forced their hand the Republic would have to do something about the food shortages. They couldn’t let hundreds of thousands of their people die. But that was a pipe dream. He was supposed to be a leader, a strategizer, and that fast and loose strategy wouldn’t work.

“I kind of miss the old days,” Rey said. He could see her muscles strain as she fought against a rusted bolt. “When we could just come up with some hair brained scheme and will it into existence.”

“I had a lot of harebrained schemes in the resistance that didn’t work.” Poe felt both empowered and nauseous thinking of everything they had gotten away with, and everything they hadn’t.

“But a lot that did.” Rey rested for a moment, then pushed herself up to a sitting position to really look at him. Poe tried to hold her gaze. “We couldn’t have done it without our hot headed flyboy.”

“Or our Jedi.” Poe’s attention dropped to the floor, and then he couldn’t help himself. He leaned into Rey’s shoulder. She smelled like burnt plastic and sweat. She smelled like home. He shivered. _We can’t talk about relationships. Already talked to Finn about it._ But Rey set her wrench down and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

“I’m not Finn,” she whispered into his hair.

“I know.”

“I’m only holding you for two minutes.”

“I’ll take it.”

\---

Poe crawled into bed two hours later, after helping Rey patch up the worst of the frayed wires, and tape the panel back on. BB-8 eventually decided to help, and once they got the lights to stop shorting out, they cleaned up together. Rey said she wanted a little time to check the life support systems and sent Poe off to bed.

He woke an hour later to soft footsteps.

“You can’t wake up,” Rey mumbled, “You said you wouldn’t.”

Poe blinked his eyes open enough to see Rey silhouetted at the side of his bed.

“Promised I’d go straight back to sleep, not that I wouldn’t wake up.” He yawned. He felt the bed sink at his side.

“Teeth.” He reminded. Rey rolled back off the bed. He heard the sink in the fresher turn on then spitting, and he must have fallen back asleep for a second because the next thing he knew Rey was curled into a ball on the side of his bed.

“Hey Poe?”

“Sleeping.”

“Yeah sure.” Rey wasn’t convinced. She was quiet for a second then said, “You meant us didn’t you?” Poe didn’t immediately know what she was talking about, his sleep addled brain hadn’t caught up to everything that had happened on the Falcon, but when it did his heart constricted,

“What do you mean?” his voice was tight.

“I mean you wanted to talk about us.”

_Oh_

“Yeah, ‘course I did.” Poe didn’t know who else he could have been talking about.

“I thought you wanted to ask me about Ben.” Rey said, and Poe felt a small laugh crawl up from his stomach. He never wanted to talk about Ben.

“I hate him,” he said, his voice slurry with sleep and disbelief.

“Everyone wants to know about him,” Rey deadpanned.

Poe dropped a hand to the space between then, “I wanted to know about us.” Poe finally pried his eyes open. Everything was fuzzy in the darkness, everything but Rey. She was closer than usual, her brown eyes were bright, her legs curled up so Poe could feel them against his stomach. She hummed quietly her eyes fluttering, then said,

“Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

It wasn’t a no. It was still blurry, nebulous, but Poe agreed. “Yeah. ‘Course.” He was in no condition to really talk at all at that moment. His heart was doing a loopy little dance somewhere in his stomach. It only sped up when she dropped her hand to rest in his. She faded off to sleep, but her hand in his was everything he could feel for a very long time, and then he fell asleep so softly he barely noticed the change.

They woke abruptly and way too early. BB-8 was chirping a message to Rey about a stolen Jedi manuscript found near Coruscant. Rey apologized as she struggled into her boots and her shirt (Poe hadn’t even realized she had changed into one of his t-shirts) and stuffed the bagel Poe handed her into her mouth as she pulled up her hair. She ripped a piece out of the bagel then said,

“If I don’t go now to verify that it’s Jedi, they’re going to turn it over to that jackass Morsou who’s been snatching up all the Jedi artifacts.” She stomped the rest of the way into a boot and clipped her light saber onto her hip. “The falcon is limping but I should be back in a day or two. Tops.” She took another bite of her bagel and said, “Tell Finn that I’m sorry I’m missing breakfast but it’s an emergency.”

“You had breakfast plans?” Poe stumbled, feeling a little left out and winded by the speed with which the morning was happening.

“Yes, we did. All three of us. We had breakfast plans.” Rey stopped, looking a little confused, “Didn’t we tell you that?”

“Na-no.” Poe was still in his pajamas watching the whirlwind of a woman prepare to leave for a journey in less than ten minutes. He hadn’t heard anything about breakfast, and it was vaguely amusing that the two people he loved more than anything in the world had him to read their minds about breakfast. He didn’t like to think that maybe it was because they could read his.

“Tell Finn I love him.” Rey dropped the rest of her bagel on the counter, “I’m taking BB-8. See you later.” She turned, pecked Poe on the cheek and left the room before Poe had the time to even process the warm place on his cheek where her lips had been.

_I love her._ He realized for the thousandth time as the door clicked shut behind her.


	5. Relationship Surprises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe loses Mercy and finds himself talking to Finn about their relationship. He gets some startling information and makes a decision about how to move forward.

The office air was stale, the grey walls pulsed. Poe was trapped. He wanted to rip the papers off the wall, and break the datapads against the floor. He couldn’t fix this. Not here. Not like this. Not the way they wanted him to. Every idea came with paperwork and conversations and red tape. Every easy solution sparked consequences he couldn’t anticipate. Mercy would be destroyed.

He couldn’t help but wonder if Leia could have fixed this? She would have, with grace and eloquence. What would she have done? Something brilliant, for sure. She knew everyone, could spin and weave, and grow a resistance from nothing. She could save a planet with a wave of her hand.

Poe inhaled. Exhaled.

Empresses Krate, blue eyes shining, had said, “we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Good luck with your _rising republic_.”

Her words stung. 100,000 tiny needles stabbed into his skin. That’s how many people he was letting down. Hundreds of thousands of starving, scared people would stay under the thumb of megalomaniac Storm Trooper with a ship. Empresses Krate had lifted her skirts, and turned, walking away with her chest held high. Their people would die. Gritty and shaken, and they would become something Poe would never be able to look away from. Another great mistake.

He wanted to yell at her to wait. He wanted to call her back and give her some promise that they would be okay. That he would fix this. But his hands were empty. He had nothing to offer except lies. So he went back to his office, and shut the door and tried to remember how to breathe. He yelled profanities at the wall. Gripped his hands into fists to keep from throwing a chair across the room. He wanted to destroy something as soundly as he was being destroyed.

And after the meltdown he was left sitting by the door in the silence. Stale air, grey walls, buzzing yellow light. Cold arms, throbbing head, salty cheeks. A hole where his heart should be. Mercy. Empresses Krate and a world of people he was letting down. Again and again and again.

Better.

This was the Rising Republic. This was supposed to be better.

Poe’s closed his eyes.

Without the First Order, things were better. They had to be. They were.

A First Order ship floated in his minds eyes, triangular and dark even against the black of space. Mercy rotating in the background. The ship would be nearly empty, but big enough to scare off Hemsa invaders. Fast enough to go on food runs.

One X-wing could…

 _Food._ Poe shook himself. He still had other work to do. The heads of state from Lettow wanted to discuss security for a trade conversation with a once First Order Occupied territory. He needed to look over their resources and come up with a proposal by tomorrow. Maybe he could focus on that and then slowly, like everything else, the guilt of this would fade into the back of his mind. Like the guilt from giving away BB-8’s position to Kylo Ren and the guilt from losing half the resistance, and the guilt from…

He pushed himself onto his knees, then to his desk, and pulled a data pad forward. Push everything back, keep moving forward. Hope and all that. Happy beeps. Typing up notes from the meeting would be boring as hell, but at least he wouldn’t be thinking about Mercy.

He worked for a few minutes stared at the wall for a few more, poked through some numbers and dates, then switched gears. Finn needed a plan for his next rescue mission. A group of Stormtroopers near Malastare were making SOS calls to the resistance. They knew Finn’s FN number and they wanted his help. The Rising Republic would let Finn collect them as long as they had a detailed plan of action. Poe schmoozed with the republic for credits and ships, and Finn found the crews willing to make the runs to deep dangerous places to rescue the resistors. Jess was always up for a run, and Finn had so many Ex-Storm troopers following him around that he could usually say “jump” and there would be a crew at his ankles in a minute.

Poe penned out a list of officials who might help bankroll the latest expedition and realized he couldn’t remember if they hit up Weslyn recently. Finn would know. He personally thanked each of them upon returning. Poe hadn’t had time to do that in months. In fact if he wanted an excuse to talk to Finn today he could easily send someone to grab him so he could ask.

It took Poe about five second to think of that plan and another twenty to find a staffer in the hall willing to make the trip with a note for Finn to come over and bring lunch if he could. _Blurry lines_ , Poe reminded himself, but it was lunch. Lunch and a business meeting about stormtrooper rescues. The fact that he wanted to stare at Finn and make himself feel more human after his terrible morning had nothing to do with this.

Mostly.

Finn arrived about a half hour later, smiling at Poe’s door and holding a bag of leftovers. When Poe looked up Finn shifted to salute.

“General.”

“General.” Poe saluted in return and grinned. Finn poked the door shut with his boot as he walked over the threshold. Poe’s stomach rumbled as the scent of garlic noodles and warm bread reached him. Finn had never quite gotten the hang of food groups and Poe loved him for that. Mixing Bread with potatoes or eating an entire meal entirely of fruit was just how Finn did things.

Finn dropped the bag of food on top of a stack of maps on Poe’s desk and whistled at the wall to his left. Poe’s wall of crazy had apparently expanded since the last time Finn had been in his office. 

“I know,” Poe said. “It’s not as bad as it looks though.”

“Really Poe?” Finn pulled up a chair on the far side of the desk, “Cause there’s a knife in Ambassador Crux’s head.”

“I’m not. It’s-“ Poe looked over. There were at least three pictures with pins stuck in the eyeballs and besides Ambassador Crux two other officials had been murdered by pointy objects. He needed to remember to get those down before any particular people came to the city. “Yeah, it looks bad,” Poe admitted.

Finn hummed noncommittally. Poe was relieved when he dropped the subject, “The messenger kid said you wanted help with the proposal for Malastare?”

Poe shrugged, “Wanted an excuse to eat lunch with you.” _Blurry lines._

“I’ll take it.” Finn unpacked stacks of food and silverware. Poe pulled over a bowl of pasta and uncapped the lid of something green and chewy.

“Having thoughts?” Finn was making a sandwich with noodles, some skinny green vegetables and the leftovers of a hot sauce packet. Poe was still in awe of Finn’s eating habits. He wasn’t raised with normal food, or the social stigma of making weird choices and watching him was freeing. Since joining the resistance the few people who did try to explain food to him were shut down with a shrug and the ever-powerful, phrase, “Taste’s good.” People pretty much stopped talking about it after Finn poured a bowl of rice in with his breakfast cereal and topped it with a scoop of ice cream.

Poe shook his head. “Nah, just tired.” It was partially true. The Mercy situation had turned into a numb buzzing in the back of his mind unless he picked at it, and he wasn’t picking at it right then. He was just enjoying being near Finn and eating food and not having to work.

But then there was a long silence at the end of which Poe found himself saying.

“We lost Mercy.”

“Kriff.” Finn set his sandwich abomination down and looked at Poe. “Is there anything we could have done?” Finn had on his General face. His planning face.

Poe poked at his lunch. “No. Not really. It was a lost cause from the beginning.”

“Nothing’s a lost ‘cause.”

“The Republic thinks Mercy is.”

Finn frowned. Neither of them believed in lost ‘causes. If they did they wouldn’t be where they were.

“It’s storm troopers, right?” Finn asked. “The leftovers on that ship around Mercy are storm troopers.”

Poe nodded. As far as he knew it was a skeleton crew, just there to manage shipments to and from the planet, and to scare of Hemsa. Enough pilots to fly a few tie fighters. That was it. When everything fell they were left behind. One trooper with dreams of great things took over.

“What would Leia do?” Finn wondered quietly. Poe snorted. He and Finn always seemed to spiral back to the same question. _What would Leia do._

Poe settled his face into a lackluster grin, “I’m not Leia.”

Finn grunted. “What would Resistance leaders Poe and Finn do then?”

Poe put his head in his hands. What resistance leader Poe would do was irrelevant. He was Poe the high ranking Republic official. He was Poe the diplomat. He wasn’t a resistance leader. Hadn’t been in months. That was Finn. Finn was the General in the apartments with the resistance fighters. He was the guy going out and saving Storm Pilots and plotting with Jannah. Poe worried his bottom lip with his thumb.

“Say it,” Fin said.

“What?”

“I can see it all over your face, man. Just say what you’re thinking and we’ll work back from there.”

Poe dropped his head back into his hands. He didn’t want to answer but Finn was staring and he really didn’t have much to lose. He looked up.

“Resistance General Poe would do something dumb, and make a huge mess and ask for forgiveness later. Figure it out after the fact, but I can’t-“

“Hop in an x-wing and blow stuff up?”

Poe dropped his hands, and crossed his arms. No, he couldn’t. Even though every fiber of his being wanted to do just that. Rey was in his head from the night before. He was in his head and now and Finn wasn’t helping. Get in an X-wing and go.

“Why are you here Poe?” Finn flicked a paper on Poe’s desk and dropped back in his chair. He gave Poe a long hard look.

Poe felt numb as he responded, “Needed to help build the republic.” There had never been much of a choice. They had come back from Exegol and everything kept moving until he was in Chandrilla signing papers and organizing missions.

“And you did.” Finn looked around the room. “You handed over everything the Republic needed to run this thing. So what are you doing here? What are _we_ still doing here?” The way he said _we_ made Poe’s stomach flip. He opened his mouth. Then closed it.

He was surviving. That was it.

He was doing what he thought he was supposed to be doing and he was surviving. One foot in front of the other.

Finn’s gaze made him stop. It was the first time Poe wondered if survival was enough. For a long time it was. It was all he could do, but now? Was this life? Would he forever be waking up making it through the day and falling asleep in a bed at night that if he was lucky would have Rey or Finn in it?

“You’re a leader of fighter pilots,” Finn said. “And you’re damn good at it, so why are you sitting behind a desk, filling papers and talking to diplomats and making-” Finn looked over at the wall again, “terrifying wall decorations?”

Poe didn’t know. He knew he wanted Finn to stop talking. He wanted to pull the brakes on this conversation, because it was hitting too close to home. It was freeing the beasts that had been living in the back of Poe’s mind for months, even if he had refused to put words to the thoughts. To the feelings. He was fine. This was fine. He was better. This was better. Just had to keep going and everything would be fine. Finn didn’t stop.

“The world doesn’t need a diplomat who hates his job.” Finn leaned into the table, his eyes were warm and his word earnest, but every new thought hit Poe like a blaster shot. “The world needs Poe. They need you happy and wild and flying.” Poe pushed his chair back. He needed out of Finn’s sphere. He could feel his breath stuttering. He shut his eyes and tried his best to hide from Finn’s words. Finn’s voice rose, “We need the best pilot in the resistance.”

When Poe inhaled his breath hitched. _No no no_ he was not about to break down. He was fine. Thiswasfine.Hewasfine.

“Poe.”

“No.” The word finally tumbled from his mouth. He opened his eyes. He was in his horrible office. Lunch was spread across the table, Finn was leaning over his desk, staring again. Poe was backed against the wall. His hand went to his hair, tugged as he pushed fingers through tangles over and over. “I- no. There’s nowhere to go Finn. There’s no resistance and I-“

“am a damn good pilot?” Finn finished for him with a raised eyebrow, “hate my current job? Am done with playing by these rules?” As Finn kept offering alternatives Poe kept backing farther and farther away. “Tired of not helping people because of bureaucracy? Tired of spending time and energy helping rich-”

“Shut up!”

“Why?” Finn was still sitting. Leave it to him to be the calm rational one. Finn hadn’t pushed his buttons like this in weeks, and they hadn’t fought much over anything besides holovids and food since their resistance days, but something about this was making Finn fight. “Because it seems to me like this isn’t working. Rey and I were letting you try, but you’re miserable and we both see it. It’s exhausting to watch you be so kriffing depressed.”

Ah Rey. Of course. They were ganging up on him. Finn was mad because Rey had his back. That had happened a few times, in the dark days. He thought it was over. He was better.

Poe took a breath. He was better. So much better that Finn was willing to pick a fight with him. Willing to press an issue that he wouldn’t have during the dark times. A flicker of a smile crept up Poe’s face before he could stop it. He forgot how much he loved how Finn looked when he was arguing for something he loved. The passion the fire and the petty frustration. Dammit.

Tamp it down Dameron.

An absurd laugh crept up his throat. This was horrible, awful, bad. Finn’s face dropped to concern, and Poe held out a hand and took an unsteady breath. He didn’t have a response yet, but he needed Finn to know he was- not fine, but- not at broken as he looked. Probably.

Poe breathed. Finn was right. He was miserable, bone crushingly tired, and he couldn’t stop it. He thought it was just stress from life post-war, but time kept going and he got better. So much better, and he hadn’t had time yet to face the fact that maybe it wasn’t the war that was making him miserable now, maybe it was his job, and the grey skies of this Chandrilla city, and the energy it took him every day to not reach across a desk and kiss Finn, or hold Rey on the long nights. Maybe holding back the good and walking through the bad was making him miserable. Maybe putting one foot in front of the other day after day wasn’t the answer. He felt floaty. His skin felt inflated like he was wrapped in air.

“Poe?”

Finn walked around the desk. He wasn’t charged with frustration or even worry anymore, it was something else. Fear. That wasn’t right. It also wasn’t right that Poe was looking up at him. Up?

It took him way too long to realize he was on the floor. He was on the floor.

“Whoa-“ Poe recognized the cold under his legs, the grey wall at his back. “How-“

“You’re fine.” Finn dropped to crouch in front of him and Poe made an effort to look him in the eyes. Ground himself. But the walls around Finn tilted and Poe had to shut his eyes. He shivered. The floor was really cold.

“You’re fine, Poe-“ Finn’s voice was warm, his hand warmer when it rested on his shoulder. Poe flinched away. He didn’t want Finn’s hand, or he wanted it too much. He forced the sleeves of his shirt down and inhaled. Damn this whole situation. Damn everything. Breathe.

Finn shifted so he was sitting, close to Poe but not touching him. Slowly he started talking,

“We could take the falcon,” he said. “We could get the hell out of here. You me and Rey. Lay low on Yavin for a few months. You decide what you want to do from there.” Finn put his hands on Poe’s shins and Poe let him. Even let him Rub circles against his bone with his thumbs, waiting for Poe to open his eyes. He’d done that before, but Poe couldn’t remember when. The dark days were so shattered in his memory. 

He shook Poe’s legs to emphasize his point, “We are not slaves to this system. Jess has been hinting at us leaving for months. Kare’s just hanging out here for you. Hell, she and Rose would probably follow us wherever we go.”

“What about the Storm Troopers?” That was it, right. They were the brightest lights in all the darkness of them being on Chandrilla.

Finn didn’t take even a second to think, “I’ve saved 300 of them. I think one of them can carry on for a little while.”

Poe could feel his breathing return to something resembling normal. In out. In out. In- wait. Then he choked because was Finn proposing what he thought he was proposing? Running away together? Together together. Together.

Poe’s brain shifted and flipped and landed somewhere in a groggy sea of possibility. He appreciated the break from the doom and gloom but he was also unsettled. He forced his eyes open. Finn was still there, hands still curled on his legs. He could take those hands. Try to jump into that safe place he had been denying himself. The one Finn was offering.

No.

He couldn’t. Something kept tripping him up. Something he couldn’t quite pin down. He swallowed and looked back up at the room. His office. He had done some good in there. At some point he had made a difference. He still held so much on his shoulders. He couldn’t leave. He had to-

But he liked thinking about it. Just the possibility of saying no and walking away was making his heart beat a little faster. A little happier. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to cut and run, but he could. In the grand scheme of the galaxy, cut and run was a choice, and not even close to the worst choice he had ever made. This wasn’t spice running. This wasn’t mutiny.

It frustrated him that something about leaving still felt off.

“C’mon,” Finn rose to his feet, and took Poe’s hand to tug at him. “We should finish lunch, and then you can take a sick day and go sleep and think.”

Poe didn’t budge. He held firm to his spot on the ground. There was still too much swirling around in his brain. If he did leave, if he quit, did he want to quit with Finn, and if he did run away with Finn what would that mean? What were they, or what could they be, or what would Poe have to tell himself day after day to not ruin their relationship.

His happiness and his escape and his decision to leave with Finn all hinged on that word. Relationship. He could only do it if he knew where they stood. If he knew what Finn wanted and what Rey wanted and what they were to each other or what they could be some day.

“Poe-“ Finn tugged again, getting a little annoyed. “Man you can’t stay on the floor-“

“Finn,” Poe licked his lips and looked up. “I was gonna talk to Rey about this, but I also- I think I need to talk to you-” Poe’s arm shook and he wondered if Finn noticed. He was anxious and out of his mind and talking. Staring a conversation he had no idea how to finish. Finn paled but when his hand slackened, Poe didn’t let him drop the hold.

“What’s up?” Finn stared and Poe tried to get his scrambled thoughts together as quickly as possible because he needed to scrub the terrible scared look off Finn’s face. He didn’t mean to scare him.

“You-we- Finn-“ How did he say it. Words. What were words? How did he say _I need you as my general,_ but in like a romantic way? In a broad life changing way. The answer was that you didn’t. “Uhh. You know what don’t worry about it Buddy.” This wasn’t a good time, or a good day. He was a mess and should eat lunch and take a nap and rethink all of his life choices. There were blurry lines and too many people involved and this could definitely wait. He started to pull himself up, but Finn’s grip had gone completely slack. Poe couldn’t leverage himself back up. Before he could drop Finn’s hand in order to push up with the floor instead, Finn squatted back down. They were toe-to-toe. Eye-to-eye. The air left Poe’s lungs in one fell swoop. Force Finn was beautiful. The crinkles around his eyes, his full lips, his worried frown. Damn. He did not need to be that close, looking that worried.

“What are you talking about?” Finn asked quietly. Finn’s other hand went to his knee and dammit, no Finn. Bed Not now. It didn’t help that there was the small pinch above his brow. The one Poe really really wanted to reach out and rub away. Kiss it away. Nope. He needed to reign that in. Reign it in. Finn shifted. “You got yourself in some shifty business again?” he asked.

“Kriff what?” Poe pressed himself back against the wall, “No Finn- It’s not-“

“Then what?” Finn laughed. The crinkled was gone, replaced with a nervous half smile. Poe looked away to avoid losing himself in that grin. Finn tapped his leg lightly, “Can’t be that bad unless you’re breaking up with me or something-“

Poe slipped, or he felt like it. Felt the work had just tumbled on its axis. X-wing spring out of control. Emergency Eject. Eject.

“I’m what?” The only thing his mouth could form was a slurry of huh!? Finn was joking. Finn was making a very strange joke.

“Breaking up,” Finn repeated with a small laugh, “Poe it was a joke” but then Finn’s face turned ashen, “Unless you are breaking up - in which case uhh-“

No. What. Huh?

“Finn? We’re not dating. What? ” Poe couldn’t form a single coherent thought for a dazzlingly long time. Blurry lines, but what was Finn talking about?

“Poe?” Finn raised an eyebrow, took his hand off Poe’s knee to point between them, “ I thought-“ When Poe continued to look utterly confused Finn said, “You asked me out?!”

“No I didn’t-“ Poe couldn’t breathe again. He looked around his office wondering when Jess would pop out laughing about her first-class prank.

Except Finn’s face was totally neutral. He wasn’t joking. He was frustrated. “After the war?” Finn said. “We finally got to Chandrilla, and got food at that hole in wall Yavinian place.” Finn stared and Poe stared back, eyes wide to demand more information. That dinner was a celebration a - yes Poe would have liked… but the war had just ended and he was in no position to… and Finn “What the hell Poe?” Finn was back to arguing, “Co-generals-“ Finn motioned between them back-and-forth, “I thought you were just being you about this whole thing and not using your words-“

“I wasn’t-“ Poe stuttered. “I didn’t meant to ask you out-“

“What did _you_ think was going on?” Finn growled. He dropped to his butt, looking as stunned as Poe felt.

“We never said anything. We didn’t clarify-” Poe stuttered, shocked, “We’ve never kissed.”

“You don’t have to kiss to be in a-“ Finn threw his hands up. His frustrated face was determinedly back in place. “dammit Poe. You cuddle like a Krakwan when you sleep in my bed. We shop for food together, you call me every other day when I’m off world and you’re constantly bickering with me! Rey calls us ‘The Generals’! Even she knows we’re together and she didn’t know Kare and Snap were married until I pointed it out to her-“

“Finn-“ Poe said his name to shut him up.

“Poe!”

They both stared. Poe’s breath shook in the silence. His heart racing while he tried to come to terms with what was going on. His brain was doing the fastest mental calculations he’d ever done while also trying to remember a single time he had cuddled Finn. He couldn’t, but Finn didn’t sleep much so he was always in bed after Poe fell asleep and awake making him breakfast and Kriff. It was entirely possible that he had cuddled him. Poe was a cuddler! Snap and Jess had both complained about that the week they had run low on cots at base.

Finn wasn’t wrong about the bickering either but he thought- he thought that was just- that was just how they talked, and of course they shopped together. Finn was adorable in shops and Poe wasn’t about to miss out on that. The comms were just polite because they were colleagues and, and, and. . . Maybe Finn had a point. Force Kriff. Fuck. Finn had a point. From a certain angle. If he tilted his head to the side, he had a point. But there was the glaring obvious missing piece. They had never talked about it. Poe talked about relationship. He had to. He owed it to people. That’s how relationships worked, but maybe Finn didn’t know?

Poe went with the only path forward he could think of. Talking it through like he had wanted to for months.

“What do you think people do in a relationship?” he asked, calmly and clearly. He didn’t want to make Finn feel bad, or nervous, he just needed to know. He had considered the possibility that Rey and Finn would never be interested in a romantic relationship with him, or anyone for that matter. Neither ever pointed out cute folks or talked about past relationships. They seemed happy enough with just being friends. But now Poe was apparently in a relationship with one of them, and he definitely needed answers. He needed to know what Finn expected, now, and what he might expect in the future. They needed to clarify a lot of things before either of them stepped over a line the other didn’t even know existed.

Finn shrugged, “I was a Storm Pilot but I’m not stupid- You do whatever makes you happy in a relationship, and I’m happy with you.”

Poe stared because that wasn’t really an answer and Finn eventually continued,

“I thought what we were doing was what you wanted. I though that’s what you wanted in a relationship. Hanging out, talking, sharing meals and a bed sometimes and enjoying each other’s company. We support each other on good and bad days. I’m happy. I thought you were too. I never thought to ask about the other stuff-“

“Other stuff?” Poe pressed him, “like kissing and sex, Finn. Like kissing. Do you want that?” It was very important that Poe find this out, because he really wanted their relationship to involve something physical and if Finn didn’t he wanted to know sooner rather than later.

“Well- “ Finn inhaled. “You were going through a lot, man. I was letting you take the lead-“

Poe’s stomach was swirling. Happy and confused and sad for Finn. Mad that he had lost so much time, and furious with himself that he hadn’t picked up Finn’s wildly subtle messages. For someone who never seemed subtle, and Poe who could read sultry into anything it was amazing that they had made it this far without having this conversation. Poe took a deep breath.

“I need you to know that even when I’m tired and cranky and a little unhinged you can ask for what you want.” Poe made sure to look Finn in the eye even as Finn tried to look at the wall. “Hey-“ Poe reached out and gently took Finn’s chin. His brown eyes slowly moved to rest on his. “This isn’t the First Order. You want to put rice on cereal, you put rice on cereal. If you’re in a relationship and want to kiss the person you’re in a relationship with, you can ask about kissing them.”

Poe tried not to pour too much frustration into every syllable. He wasn’t annoyed at Finn. He was a little annoyed at Finn, but more annoyed at whatever circumstances led to Finn not thinking about speaking up. He needed Finn to know he could talk to Poe about relationships, because Poe needed that. Poe needed a branded neon sign in the sky when it came to relationships. He should have realized that with Rey and Finn it wouldn’t be that easy. If they forgot to invite him to breakfast because they assumed he knew already, it wasn’t a far stretch to assume they would leave him out of crucial conversations about their relationship.

“So-“ Finn chewed on Poe’s words, “So I can just say-“

“Do you want-“ Poe huffed in exasperation. “Can I kiss you Finn? Would you like that?”

Finn perked up, “Can I kiss you?”

“Kriff. Dammit yes!”

He had barely finished his cursing before Finn tumbled on to his knees and met Poe in the middle for an uncoordinated mess of a lips and teeth. A sloppy kiss, but a kiss nonetheless. One that sent good fireworks into Poe’s brain and short-circuited everything in him for a long time. His lips to his fingers to his feet tingled. Even when Finn pulled away looking started and dazed Poe was still blinking yellow sparks from his eyes.

“We need to work on that,” Poe said.

“I can do that.” Finn leaned back in. It was better that time. Softer and slower and Poe got to feel every move and every warm tendril that ran up his arms. He felt Finn’s hand go from his shoulder to his neck. Force. It was good. It was safe and strong and warm.

“Took us long enough-“ Poe panted when they parted.

“I should have asked-“ Finn apologized, “That was- I should have asked sooner. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Sorry buddy. I was-“

“A little preoccupied, I get it.”

Poe ran the collar of Finns shirt between his fingers. Soft fabric, warm skin underneath.

“We got there.”

Finn smiled, and Poe felt something very obvious hit him like a brick. He was going to leave with Finn. He was going to get into a ship and they were going to Yavin or Jakku or Mercy or who the kriff cares, as long as Finn was there. As long as Rey came with them. He was leaving.

But he was also a fighter pilot. Best pilot in the resistance, and he wouldn’t be Poe if he didn’t leave a mess in his wake.

“Now might be a bad time to tell you I’m going to fly an X-wing to Mercy-“ Poe said.

Finn grinned, “Never a bad time for a bad plan,” he said. A few different emotions flashed across Finn’s face; worry, love, plotting, until it landed on fortitude. “Rey and I can follow as soon as she’s back.”

“Kriff-“

“What?”

He had promised to talk to her, about their relationship. That was going to be a little more complicated now that he had kissed Finn. What were they? Would this be okay? He always kind of thought Rey and Finn were something or would be someday. Except, Finn said Rey knew about them, and Rey had kissed him on the cheek.

“Rey thinks we’re dating?” he asked.

“Yes.” Finn nodded. He was looking at Poe as if trying to go three steps ahead in their conversation and coming up short.

“Hmmmm.”

“What?”

“She kissed me on the cheek this morning,” Poe said. He took a deep breath and dove in. Why not, everything else about this conversation was weird, why not make it as weird as humanly possible. “and I think I’m in love with her too. Kind of.”

“Yeah, we know.” Finn didn’t sound the least bit surprised. _Damn Jedis_

“Okay I need to know-“ Poe briefly shut his eyes, afraid of the answer, “Am I dating her too?”

Finn laughed. Poe shot him an annoyed look and Finn’s face dropped. Poe wasn’t joking around.

“No-“ Finn looked sheepish when he admitted, “It’s complicated.”

“Mind letting me in on why it’s complicated?” Poe asked, trying to keep his irritation in check.

“Maybe when she gets back?” Finn offered. Poe glowered.

“It’s complicated with Ben, and she likes you too, and she likes me, but she’s still getting over him and you should talk to her so she can explain-“

Poe released Finn’s collar and patted his chest. That was fine. It was better than a nothing explanation.

“Fine for now.” Poe rubbed his hand on his forehead and decided on where to go from here. The only thing he knew for certain was that he needed a few things clarified.

“So I’m dating you?” he asked.

Finn nodded.

“I’m not dating Rey.”

“No.”

“Are you dating Rey?”

“Not yet.” Poe really liked that answer. He held back a smile before moving forward with his interrogation.

“Is anyone else dating me that I don’t know about?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay.” Poe rubbed his hands together and nodded, more to himself then Finn before deciding to say, as clearly as possible, “Relationships are about communication, you get that right?”

“I’m starting to,” Finn said. “Sorry. I didn’t. I’m new to this, in a way.”

“That’s okay. It’s okay. I’m happy that we are finally talking about this. It’s just that I’m a big talker when it comes to relationships and I need that from you.”

Finn nodded.

“So ground rules?” Poe said tentatively. Finn nodded again. He dropped to his butt on the floor and folded his hands in his lap like a child at school.

Poe fought down a grin again because he needed Finn to take this deadly seriously. “Okay- so next time we’re dating, or reaching a new level in our relationship, I need you to say it with your mouth and not just think it very hard into the force. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“If you want to kiss me or do anything more intimate you need to say it, with your mouth.”

Finn smirked,

“Not like that.” And Poe worried briefly about how much Finn— the young and repressed Storm Trooper _knew_ — but he pushed that from his mind. It was for another day. “I need you to use your words, Finn. Words-“

“Okay-“ Finn chuckled but Poe knew he was listening.

“And finally, next time you and Rey decide to plan a breakfast or something please inform me at some point so I don’t miss out. I get jealous and sad when you forget about me.” At that Finn got back up on his knees and leaned in.

“Never forget about you,” Finn said. “Got it. So can I kiss you again?”

Poe pretended to be put out, but the time it would take to roll his eyes was time he could be kissing Finn, so instead he leaned in.

“You can kiss me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Sorry this chapter took so long, my sister had a baby and my other sister decided to move during the freaking apocalypse so I've been busy. 
> 
> 2) So I set out to write some Poe angst to cope and it's accidentally become totally relationship oriented. I have, never (in my wildly aromantic life) written romance, but I was having fun so I decided to run with it. It was all fun and games until it turned into the straightest thing I’ve written in my gay damn life. Weird, but it's working. I hope you all don't mind some Poe/Finn/Rey. Rey comes back in the next chapter and the trio continues to do the best they can. 
> 
> <3


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